


scars

by hyattdeath



Series: stolen time [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Can be read as one shot, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, M/M, Physical and emotional abuse, Self Harm, all abuse comes from sazed, dissociating, dont have to read this one to understand future plot if you dont want to, lots of blood, please be careful and dont trigger yourself, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 00:50:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10910913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyattdeath/pseuds/hyattdeath
Summary: The bad thing about being reset every year was that scars stayed no matter what they did.after 100 years taako has alot of scars





	scars

**Author's Note:**

> hey im micky and i write vent fics were i force my fav characters to relive my trauma and have the same mental disorders as me 
> 
> please pay attention to the trigger warnings

Without Lup, Taako feels bad about himself and his scars all the time, he worries he’s a disappointment and that no one will love him that no one will have him.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bad thing about being reset every year was that scars stayed no matter what they did. If you were killed you were re-put together with the scars of how you died and any scars that you had accumulated that year stayed. Sometimes they got lucky and were able to hide them with makeup or they lessened over time.

During his time without his memory he always wondered how he got some of his scars. they are hard to ignore standing out bright white on his darker skin. He had no memory of them and a lot of times he was able to put it off as some strange scar he got as a child or something from cooking. But it’s hard to excuse a large bite mark from a dog on his throat or the deep scars on his wrists that not even magic could have saved him from. There's no reason for them and he doesn't remember them. He doesn’t remember his ear being bent or two of his fingers on his left hand being broken and left with small bumps where the bone was set wrong; he just simply puts it off as a human doing it.

But worse of all were the large amount of self harm scars. There were a few light ones on his face that he hid with makeup, but they were all the way down his arms from shoulder to the top of his hands, over his chest, his ribs, on his lower stomach, down his legs from his hips to his knees to his ankles. They are long and overlapping, they are ugly as all hell. There’s so many of them most people start to think that he’s using blood for spells and rituals, but he’s never once used that. But he can’t stop cutting. He gets to the point where he starts to make sure he wears sleeves that go down to his elbow and skirts that go to his knees at least. 

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Life is hard for him and he’s depressed not sure what to do or who to trust. When he wakes up he is in a clearing and a human is standing over him with some strange bottle of black liquid. Thinking it was poison, he tried to get away and had to fight them. He thought he was going to die they fought hard and long and the man even pulled his ear. He remembers the stories of the humans killing the elves for parts. He remembers the elves he had seen who had escaped humans capture missing limbs and ears sometimes even kidneys and livers. He refuses to be like them. When he finds out that human was Barry - who was trying to help him - he cried.

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He hurts himself to punish himself to show that he was ugly. To show himself that he was weak and pathetic. He cuts when he dissociates, the cuts deep and angry then. He cuts when he he has panic attacks, he cuts when he cries, when he is mad, even when he is happy just to show himself he doesn’t deserve that. He cuts to fill a void he can’t place, can’t fill, in his life.

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He is young after his memory is erased, he can no longer speak Common and is scared of the world, he joins the first caravan he sees. He cleans up after them and helps where he can but because no one in charge knows what he’s saying and he doesn’t understand them. They ignore him. There are elves there who translate things for him in emergencies. He cooks for them as a thank you and after they show the leaders, he is eventually sent to be a cook. He is busy all the time but he’s happy for the first time since his aunt died and he cuts less.

He meets Sazed after five years with the caravan. He pulls up in his own wagon that he owns all on his own. He’s half human which scares him, but is also half tiefling, another race that the humans go after. So he decides to trust the man. He’s at least twice his size and a good foot taller than him not counting the small horns. After eating his food and talking to him Sazed sweet talks him in clumsy elvish, spins him sweet promises and pretty tales of the two traveling and performing. He pulls Taako into his lap, holds him as though he will break and gives him his first kiss. He loves it, loves these promises, these touches, and he goes.

The first six months are wonderful, the best six months he’s ever had in his whole life. Sazed looks at him as though he had hung the moon. He complimented him telling him how beautiful he was, how smart and how talented. sazed likes things that the humans of the caravan called him ugly for, his buckteeth, his large eyebrows, his wild curly hair. He teaches him Common, even how to read it and he picks it up fast enough to start shows. He gets confident and starts to speak his mind more.

But then things change.

It starts slowly. Sazed starts to get mean to him, he’s never perfect, never good enough for him. He starts putting him down after shows, telling him everything and anything that went wrong, whether it was that the food was a little overcooked, or that his hair was a little too messy, to saying that he looked like a whore when he flirted with the crowd. But then he holds him, cuddles him, pets his hair and tells him pretty lies.

He takes it all because he doesn’t know better. It then turns to small slaps when Taako gets ‘mouthy’. Then one night Sazed punches him so hard he falls to the floor. When the marks start to form he buys him foundation at the store, even goes so far as to teach him how to use it to cover the bruises before a show. Then over a few years it gets more and more violent to the point where he’s getting beaten every night. 

After two years Sazed asks for sex, he’s scared, he’s small and young; he’s never done that before with anyone other than heavy petting with other elves. He tells him no and Sazed punches him so hard he flies back and hits his head on a cabinet and he passes out. When he wakes up he’s in their bed and when he tries to call out to sazed he realizes his jaw is broken. He looks in the mirror and sees a gap in between two of his bottom teeth. His jaw has been split into two halves. It takes them three days to reach a town and Taakos in pain the entire time. Everytime he tries to talk he bleeds more. It’s all over one of his shirts. They find a cleric who heals him for a warm cooked dinner and with a few extra coins they ask no questions. 

The next time Sazed asks him for sex he agrees. It’s so painful he feels like his hips will break and he bleeds all over their sheets and he limps for a week but sazed doesn’t beat him that night so he starts to let him do whatever he pleased. He even holds him those nights, allowed to stay in the bed so long as he didn’t move too much. The two spend almost 10 years together like that, and Taako cuts through it all as the only form of control he has. He does it in secret since when Sazed finds him he hits him for doing it. He says it makes him ugly.

One day Sazed starts to bring up joining the cooking show and Taako actually fights. He’s worked hard, and put up with too much to let this man take this final thing away from him. He spins lies about the brand or something, anything, to keep Sazed away from his one true joy. Sazed didn’t beat him that night, not even a slap; he just got up and left. He was more violent after that and two months later Glamor Springs happens.

Two days after Glamor Springs Taako is still crying. Hes bloody, his arms have new cuts on them, and he even cut his face up on the left side from under his eye to his neck. He is throwing up everything he’s just tried to eat when Sazed enters the wagon. He kisses his cheek and lays him down as Taako starts to cry harder. They have sex and Sazed is more careful. It still hurts, he still bleeds from it, but it’s not as bad as before and Taako even feels some pleasure. He closes his eyes and tries to forget that forty people are dead because of him. Tries to pretend that they are alive and enjoying dinner with their families. He tries to not vomit.

Sazed grabs his neck with both hands and squeezes. Taako tries to fight back, to make him stop, but Sazed is larger and if he wants to do it there’s nothing Taako can do to stop it. He passes out and when he wakes up he is alone. He does not blame him.

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When he meets Magnus and Merle he’s not exactly looking his best. He still has cuts everywhere and he’s not wearing makeup. He’s bundled up from his nose to his feet to hide himself. He is about 20 pounds lighter and completely unrecognizable. He has even dyed his long hair a bright teal and pushed all of it up under his hat. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows he can handle being an adventurer. 

Things go well at the beginning, even after he goes to the moon and is forced into becoming a member of some crazy organization, and despite refusing to let Magnus and Merle see him without being bundled up things are great. His weight loss has slowed to the point where he only loses about one pound a week, and he can now eat at least one meal a day. He’s hurting himself less. 

Then he meets Angus. A small child, a very small child, one who is at least half elven, who goes to the moon and becomes a member of the crazy organization too. The boy is a baby to an elf. And suddenly everything is too much.

The three of them all have their own rooms in a small suite. They have a small kitchen and a common room and a bathroom that only the three have to share. It’s the best and fanciest thing Taako’s ever had in his whole life. He has a little room with a cozy daybed and soft blankets, a large bookshelf he’s able to fill with magical tomes, herbs, crystals, bones and chalk. He has a long dresser that’s slowly gaining Magnus’s carvings on it, and he always has a vase of flowers from Merle. 

He sits on his bed in short shorts and a tank top as his feet dangle over the edge. This is the least amount of clothes hes worn in a long time and the only reason he’s able to do it is because he was finally able to lock the door. It should feel good to have air on his skin but he can’t feel anything. He feels like he’s floating. He’s anxious. It builds in his chest and bubbles up into his throat, and in order to calm himself he must give himself eight cuts; four on his lower arms and four on his thighs. He sits and settles into the pain letting it bring him back into his body.

And then he realizes it’s been twenty minutes and he’s still bleeding steadily. His legs and lower arms are covered in blood, along with his blanket. There are drops on the hardwood floor beneath him and he gets scared. He fears that they will throw him away after this; he doesn’t want to be more a burden on these two, but he thinks he may be dying. Panic bubbles back up as he runs out of his room and bangs on Merle’s door. He’s vaguely aware he’s covering Merle’s door with bloody handprints, that there’s a trail of bloody footprints on the floor behind him that he’s going to have to scrub later.

Both Merle and Magnus open there doors at the same time. Merle has his xtreme teen bible in one hand and his axe in the other while Magnus has railsplitter held tightly in his grip. Magnus rushes past him towards his room and when Merle tries to go after him to help, Taako grabs him and begs him to help him.

Merle takes him to the couch and sets him down, trying to calm him. He realizes he’s not speaking in Common, but the words he needs to say won’t come to him. Magnus comes back and grabs his shoulders, shaking him a little he asks him in halted Elvish what happened to him. He tries to explain as best he can but the words are jumbled and he’s not sure even he can make sense of the words that just came out, but somehow Magnus translates and they help him get to the infirmary. Magnus has to carry him so there’s not a blood trail and Taako sobs all the harder that he’s now being an even bigger burden.

As soon as they healers see him they force him to drink a thick vicious looking potion that makes him want to throw up. It numbs his pain well enough, pain he didn’t realize he had been feeling, and makes him feel warm and fuzzy. They try to clean the blood away so they can find the wounds but he shakes so bad and flinches so hard everytime they try to touch him that they give up and magnus volunteers to try.

He still flinches when Magnus touches him but much less than when the others tried. To keep him calm, Melre puts his hair in fancy dwarven braids to keep it out of the way. Magnus is gentle, first cleaning off the semi-dried blood on his hands and feet and working up to gently dabbing as he gets to the cuts. 

The healers give him stitches for the particularly bad wounds and make him drink two more potions - one to replenish blood and another to sedate him. He falls asleep quickly after that. When he wakes up, it takes him a minute to realize where he is. He’s in their shared common room in Merles fantasy recliner, its soft smooth leather. Magnus added extra cushion to it at some point, and he also has two thick quilts that look a lot like the blankets he’s seen in Magnus’s room.

He is warm and groggy, and tries his hardest to not think about how late in the day it is. Looking over he can see his door is open and his blankets are gone, along with the blood trail and although he can’t see it, probably the blood on Merle’s door as well. He can feel the scratch of bandages around his arms and legs, the patches of gauze on his chest and stomach. He tries to pretend that they're not disappointed in him. he looks to the side table and finds a note under a glass of water saying he couldnt get up alone because he could hurt himself further.

It doesn’t take long for the whole bureau to hear about it. To have finally seen the strangely dressed elf in nothing but blood. Those who know him and the boys come to visit to check on him. He’s still in Merle’s chair covered in magnus’s blankets. He doesn’t bother to cover himself as much; they all know now anyway. When Magnus comes back with his sheets and covers he remakes his bed and helps Taako get into them so he can rest in his own space. The healers had informed them to make sure he takes another sedating potion and as he falls asleep again Magnus tucks him in.

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Taako stops covering himself and starts to wear whatever he wants. He doesn’t want to show the scars and scabbed over cuts off or anything, it’s just that everyone knows so what’s the point in hiding it now? He listens to the rumors of what happened that night and laughs. Life picks back up and he goes to get more relics and spends more time with those around him.

Angus, he decides, is too close to being like him. The boys too smart for his age, too bright, too curious, and he’s going to get hurt. He wonders if he’s the only one to notice that Angus is half elf, and he wonders if Angus himself even knows it. His ears barely point at the tip but even though it’s muddled with human blood he has the strange eternal beauty and grace of an elf. He even has the inherent magical abilities of an elf. 

During life with his aunt he had seen many half elven half human children. He watched them grow up faster than him - still slowly more like an elf, but much faster than him. They are larger, broader, more handsome than beautiful. They are not as androgynous looking as normal elves and because of that don’t fully understand Elven pronouns, their human mother or father explain human pronouns to them and only lets them use those. But despite all these differences and being half human themselves they still didn’t trust humans.

Angus is like them, in ways, he’s only 10 but already he reaches Taako’s chest. He’s already starting to broaden out, his shoulders are widening and his feet and hands have grown to be comically large, much larger than Taako’s. Taako can tell the boy’s going to be large and handsome. He’s going to be able to charm his way into whatever he wants. But he’s trusting of everyone and it scares Taako - what if a human realizes he’s a half elf and dices the boy up for magical parts?

When none of the other elves at the bureau take him in he steps up and starts to give the boy magic lessons. Honestly it’s all a front to teach the boy things his aunt had taught him. He pulls the boy’s hair, trips him, snatches his books and levitates them up in places the boy will have to climb up to find. He snatches him up and wrestles him, holding him down making the boy fight out of his hold. 

He teaches Angus about his elven blood, teaches him songs, words, and phrases that will let him get sanctuary in elven caravans. He teaches him about pronouns and how to tell a sun elf from a wild elf. When angus won’t leave taako alone about his scars and cuts taako flicks and lightly tugs his ears, making him get disoriented and nauseous. One day Carey and Killian scold him about it, asking him why he’s so mean to him. He explains that he wished he was treated like that, taught that some humans were mean would pull their ears, hit them, try to kill them. He can make sure Angus is prepared and ready for it, used to it so it doesn’t hurt as bad. They leave him alone after that.

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Meeting Kravitz was weird. They first met when Taako ate a part of him, and then later he used tentacles on him and told him he was going to put him in a porno so like. It was weird. In fact, it was the weirdest meeting he’s ever had with anyone ever. But Kravitz somehow accepts his offer for a date and it’s technically the first real date Taako’s ever had, and oh boy is he excited. But he’s also worried. He wears a long sleeved dress and wore coloured tights. He even covered the scars on his face up with makeup, something he hadn’t done in months even though Kravitz had already seen them multiple times now. 

He’s amazed when Kravitz agrees to more dates, and slowly the two get to know each other, talking about the past and present. Kravitz is sweet and caring. He’s goofy though, and clumsy as all hell. He has no idea what his real race was since his death was so long ago but making his body look more like an elf felt normal. He’s bigger though, taller and wider but still has the slimness that goes with being an elf. 

When Taako invites Kravitz to his room after a few dates he’s worried he will find him ugly. Sazed always called him ugly because of his scars and his weight. He’s a lot skinnier now, so maybe, just maybe, Kravitz would be different. Kravitz practically worships him that night, kissing at his scars and whispering words of praise Taako never knew he needed. For the first time Taako feels pleasure and when they’re Kravitz doesn’t push him away or force him to cuddle. He lets him choose on his own and it’s amazing to have a choice. He stops cutting after that.

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When he gets Lup back he breaks down. It takes him about a week to do though, neither had spent time with just the two of them. But as soon as they are alone together he cries long and hard clinging to her. She gets a rag and cleans his face. She makes him take off his shirt so she can see, lift his skirt up so she can look. She takes in all his new scars. And then she shows him hers. It’s just one long stab on her hip and lower stomach that goes all the way through to the other side. 

They hold one another and for the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel bad.

**Author's Note:**

> i got two headcannons that i love dearly one is that angus is half elf cuz i want that boy to live forever   
> and two is that merle has a fantasy lazy boy and he will in fact mage hand a man out of it he only lets taako sleep in it cuz they are afraid he will roll off the couch and tear his stitches


End file.
